The Donald E. Osterbrock Book Prize of
the Historical Astronomy Division is a new biennial award that recognizes the
author(s) of the book judged to best advance the field of the history of
astronomy or to bring history of astronomy to light. The first prize will be
awarded in 2011 to Nathan Sivin for Granting the Seasons: The Chinese
Astronomical Reform of 1280, With a Study of Its Many Dimensions and an
Annotated Translation of Its Records
(New York: Springer, 2009). Sivin is Professor of Chinese Culture and of the
History of Science, Emeritus, at the University of Pennsylvania.

Based on forty years of research, the book offers
readers a nuanced and intricate exploration of what is considered to be the most important and sophisticated Chinese astronomical treatise, the
“Season Granting System [shou shi li].” This treatise contained a new set of
methods for generating annual almanacs. It took its name from the ritual of the
emperor officially promulgating these almanacs and bestowing the seasons on the
people each year as an official act of maintaining harmony between the cosmos
and the state.

The “Season Granting System” dates from
the early years of Mongol rule over China. Khubilai Khan used the ambitious
astronomical reform project as a symbolic means to inaugurate the Yuan Dynasty
(1276-1368) and more critically to legitimize Mongol rule over the conquered
Chinese.

In the first half of the book, Sivin
delves deeply into the cultural, political, bureaucratic, personal, and
technical aspects of the astronomical project. “I aim,” Sivin says, “to portray
the technical methods of astronomy as part of a continuum that enfolds every
dimension of human activity, from algorithms to political maneuver­ing.” To
this end, he examines the reform from the vantage points of Chinese astronomers
and mathematicians, monks and political advisors, timekeepers and students,
editors and printers, and “civil-service generalists.” Sivin explores how and
why Khubilai Khan invested unprecedented resources in astronomy at the urging
of his Chinese advisors. He describes the Chinese methods of computation and
observation, the layout of the observatory and the development of new
instruments, the nature of ancient astronomical records, and the previous
history of astronomical reforms in China. Along the way, Sivin offers
comparisons with contemporary European and Muslim astronomical work and
considers whether there were exchanges between Islamic and Chinese astronomers.

In the second half of the book, Sivin
translates and offers technical commentary on the “Season Granting System.” The
text contains instructions in new mathematical methods and the use of
instruments, which Sivin carefully lays before the reader. The “Season Granting
System” also contains a long “evaluation” section describing in detail the
astronomical and mathematical methods endorsed by prior astronomical reforms.
This section preserves over 1000 years of astronomical thought and activity,
and Sivin’s translation makes this history accessible to a wide audience.

Sivin’s
work is a monumental weaving of many historical threads and a study of the
social and scientific fabric they create. This book will be a standard
reference on Chinese astronomy and a starting point for many further studies in
astronomy, society, and history. Sivin, moreover, throws down a gauntlet to
Western and Eurocentric scholars urging them to pay more attention to Indian,
Muslim, Asian, and other non-European traditions in astronomy and consider their
role in the formulation of Western modern science.

The 2011 HAD meeting
in Seattle promises to be an exciting one, starting with the two special
sessions on Sunday, 9 January. The first, from 12:30–3:40 p.m., will be
on “The Astronomical Contributions of the Herschel Family.” Organizer Woody
Sullivan has lined up speakers Emily Winterburn (Imperial College, London), Robert
W. Smith (University of Alberta), David DeVorkin (Smithsonian Institution),
Marvin Bolt (Adler Planetarium), Woodruff T. Sullivan III (University of
Washington), Clifford Cunningham (James Cook University, with coauthors Brian
G. Marsden and Wayne Orchiston), and Thomas Hankins (University of Washington).
According to the organizer,

This session will investigate the many major
contributions to astronomy made by the family of William Herschel, his sister Caroline, his son
John, and others over the period 1780–1850. Many historians have rated
William as one of the handful of greatest observers of all time, but he was
also revolutionary in how he interpreted his observations of the solar system,
binary stars, stellar clusters, and nebulae. He discovered the planet Uranus,
invented the whole notion of evolution (“maturation”) of nebulae and clusters
from one type to another, made the first quantitative map of the Milky Way as
part of his “construction of the heavens,” and first detected infrared
radiation. And on top of all that, he advanced the technology of reflecting
telescopes far beyond that of his peers. His sister Caroline was vital for
almost all of William’s observational work, data reduction, and catalog
compilation. On her own she also discovered many comets and won one of the
earliest Gold Medals of the Royal Astronomical Society. Finally, William’s son
John extended his father’s sky survey to the Southern Hemisphere and developed
the mathematics for turning observational data into binary star orbits. Other
Herschels will also be discussed.

The second session, from 4:00-6:00 p.m.,
will be on “Neptune after One Orbit: Reflections on the Discovery of a Planet.”
Craig Waff and Bill Sheehan have organized the session with presentations by
Robert W. Smith (University of Alberta), Brian Sheen (Roseland Observatory,
England), William Sheehan (Independent Scholar), Craig B. Waff (Air Force
Research Laboratory), Deborah A. Kent (Hillsdale College), and Greg Laughlin
(University of California, Santa Cruz, with coauthor Mike Brown, California
Institute of Technology).

Cartoon published in France showing Adams looking in vain
for the planet and then finding it in the pages of Leverrier’s book.

This session is described:

The year 2011 marks not only the 200th
anniversary of the French mathematical astronomer Urbain Le Verrier’s birth,
but also the first return of Neptune to its optical-discovery position in 1846.
Despite the passage of more than 164 years since that planet discovery, the
circumstances surrounding the near-simultaneous mathematical predictions of a
transuranian disturbing planet made by Le Verrier and John Couch Adams, a young
Fellow in St. John’s College at the University of Cambridge, and the subsequent
optical discovery of Neptune by German astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle at the
Berlin Observatory continue to remain contro­versial. The double
anniversary occurring in 2011 is an appropriate time to examine the Neptune
discovery event from a number of new perspectives. In this session we shall
explore how Cornwall shaped Adams’ early education and his method of locating
the presence of a hypothetical disturbing planet. We shall examine the
possibility that Adams (and perhaps Le Verrier as well) may have had Asperger’s
Syndrome (high-functioning autism), a condition that may explain their
difficulties in communicating and interacting with their contemporaries. The
intense French press attack on British astronomers immediately after the
discovery is examined in detail for the first time. The role that Benjamin
Peirce’s analysis of Neptune’s actual orbit (which differed greatly from those
hypothesized by Adams and Le Verrier) played in the development and European
perception of American astronomy and mathematics will be discussed. We
open and close the session with presentations placing the Neptune discovery
event within the context of 19th-century science and relating it to modern-day
searches for planets in the outskirts of the solar system and around other
stars.

Monday will be another big day for HAD. At least twelve poster papers will be on display all day, most of them from Wayne Orchiston’s history of astronomy group at James Cook University in Australia. The morning oral session (10:00-11:30) will consist of six contributed papers, while the afternoon one (2:00-3:30) will include three, followed by the presentation of HAD’s first Donald E. Osterbrock Book Prize to Nathan Sivin for Granting the Seasons and Professor Sivin’s invited lecture on “Astronomy with a Difference: China.” In between will be the annual HAD Business Meeting, where all members can express their views. Among the topics to be discussed will be special sessions for the next meeting-session organizers are needed-and the question of whether HAD should hold more of its meetings separate from the AAS. And the evening will see HAD’s fourth annual minibanquet. More information will be sent via e-mail. There will be more oral contributed papers Tuesday morning.

Full abstracts of all HAD papers will appear soon on
the HAD website at http://had.aas.org/. Just go to “Meetings with Links to Abstracts” and
then to 2011.

The annual HAD Business Meeting will end,
as it does in every odd-numbered year, with the ceremonial changing of the
guard. Thomas Hockey will turn over the gavel and the “Ich bin HAD” plaque to
new Chair Jarita Holbrook. Tom will then become Past Chair and thus Chair of
the HAD Prize Committee. The Prize Committee now has tasks to do every year,
selecting the recipient of HAD’s highest honor, the LeRoy E. Doggett Prize for
Historical Astronomy, and the Donald E. Osterbrock Book Prize for Historical
Astronomy in alternate years.

The three winners of the recent election
will also assume office: Jay Pasachoff (pictured above) will become Vice
Chair/Chair Elect, which will put him in charge of soliciting and editing
obituaries of all newly-deceased AAS members for the next two years. Richard
Jarrell and Wayne “Ozzie” Osborne will join the HAD Committee.

Jay Pasachoff’s response to his election
was, “I am very pleased to have a chance to help the AAS’s Historical Astronomy
Division continue to do interesting things, including not only our meeting
symposia but also visits to rare-book collections and other activities, as well
as expanding our outreach as much as possible.”

Thanks to those who have served their
terms: Sara Schechner, who will complete six years of service as Vice Chair,
Chair, and Past Chair, and Kevin Krisciunas and Jim Lattis, who have served the
past two years on the HAD Committee.

The other bit of election news is that
the membership overwhelmingly ratified the updating of the bylaws. The new
version is on the website.

Some of you have asked, “Where are the
obituaries?” The American Astronomical Society reaffirms its commitment to
publishing obituaries. Even though the Bulletin of the American Astronomical
Society [BAAS] is on hiatus as a print publication, the obituaries
that once appeared there will be “published” electronically in a manner to be
directed by the AAS Publications Board. This will take place beginning in 2011.

There still will be a mechanism for those
who wish a printed version to obtain one. AAS obituaries will continue to
receive Digital Object Identifiers (stable links to digital documents) so that
they may be found via web searches. They will also continue to be accessible
from the Astrophysics Data System [ADS] and also from the list available on the
HAD website at http://had.aas.org/obits.html. They will be archived. If you are used to reading
digitized versions of the obituaries already, the major difference you will
notice will be the absence of a BAAS volume number in the citation. Higher
quality portraits—in color—will also be an improvement.

The HAD takes its obituaries mandate
seriously. Most importantly, there will be no coverage “gap” due to these
changes. We will continue toward our nearly-reached target of editing an
obituary for every deceased member of the AAS.

It has been a pleasure to serve as
vice-chair to Thomas Hockey. Tom’s laid back style makes him easy to work with,
yet, underneath, he had things that he wanted to achieve during his
chairmanship and agendas to put forward. Tom created the Cultural Astronomy
Summer School (CASS) for the International Year of Astronomy 2009 as part of
the summer pre-meeting. Better yet, it was attended by graduate students,
postdocs, educators, and filmmakers. CASS broadened their astronomy training to
include both historical and indigenous astronomy. The comments by the
participants were very positive, and they recommended that CASS be a regular
feature of AAS meetings. Perhaps Tom will take up the challenge to make it a
bi-annual if not an annual event. Tom thought deeply about how to marry HAD to
cultural astronomy, a topic that Steve McCluskey considered many years ago.
However, such a marriage will have to wait for another chair. Thank you, Tom,
for your two years of service.

Being Vice-Chair has been much more important
than I expected. My responsibility as AAS obituary editor made me often the
first person to know about the passing of members. Further, I learned much
about our members as I read and edited their obituaries. My focus was on how
each was a good mentor and a good leader, most were definitely
solid-to-brilliant astronomers. I wanted to learn how they advanced the field
of astronomy through their activities other than just scientific research. I
learned a lot. The saddest part of being Vice-Chair was not when people who
agreed to write obituaries did not turn them in; it was when I could not find
an author for one of our members.

So far this year we have produced
eighteen obituaries, with five more promised but not yet delivered. We are
still seeking individuals to write them for Joseph Zelle, Kenneth L.
Cashdollar, Julius Cahn, David S. Peregrine, Darrell Hoff, and Robert F.
Doolittle II. If you would like to write one of these, please contact me, or
after the January meeting, Jay Pasachoff.

In January, I assume the Chair of HAD. My
goal is to move forward those goals set by the HAD membership. Many of my goals
for HAD were met under Tom’s leadership, including the establishment of a
student travel award, which leaves me very pleased and quite open to suggestion.
I will rack my brain for other ways to bring young people into our organization
so that it will grow and venture into innovative ways of studying the history
of astronomy.

I have been retired from teaching for 16 months now, and I miss giving
quizzes, so I have decided to give you one.

What could I quiz HAD members on? You are extremely knowledgeable about
the history of astronomy, and practically any factual question can be answered
in minutes with an Internet search—as Woody Sullivan found out a few
years ago when he tried asking some in HAD News.

I have decided to quiz you on historical astronomy papers presented to
HAD. Yes, I found all the answers on the Internet (starting at http://had.aas.org/meetings/), but it took me quite a few hours, something most of
you are unlikely to want to invest. (Did I mention that I am retired?) I went
back through the records and compiled a list of all those who have presented
history papers since HAD’s first meeting in 1981. I am not sure what to do with
this list, but I could put it on the HAD website along with the abstracts if
there is any interest.

A few explanations first: I included all history papers presented to
the AAS, including a few that were not in HAD sessions. An example is the one
history paper presented at the June 2009 AAS meeting in Pasadena. I excluded
some non-histori­cal papers presented in what were nominally HAD sessions.
In the early years especially, there was a tendency to put education papers in
the same session with historical papers.

One striking observation: HAD once had lots of archaeoastronomy papers;
now it has very few. Has the subject died out, or have its devotees decided to
present their findings elsewhere? I suspect the latter, and I have heard that
some are choosing a meeting in Peru over Seattle this January.

Another question that arises is classification. I made no attempt to
classify the papers (something David DeVorkin did when he compiled a list in
HAD News #44 in 1998 (http://had.aas.org/
hadnews/HADN44.pdf, p. 4). He divided
them into Archaeoastronomy, Classical, Modern, Applied, Miscellaneous, AAS
Invited, and Public. If you submit an abstract today, the AAS asks you to
classify it into one of four categories: History – AAS, History –
Modern, History – Ancient, or History – Other. Should we add
Archaeo­astronomy and Medieval? or just have a single “History” category? I
was recently trying to decide whether a paper dealing with 10th century
astronomy should be considered ancient or modern. I ended up choosing “other”.
Please send me your comments on this.

Now for the quiz. Answers are at the end.

1. How many
different individuals presented historical astronomy papers from 1981 through
2010? Any answer within 50 will get full marks.

2. How many
individuals presented 15 or more papers? For extra credit, name them.

3.
Longevity award: Who presented at least one paper during the first two years
(1981, 1982) and also in the last two (2009, 2010).

4. What was the largest number of historical papers ever presented in one meeting? Which meeting?

HAD Vice President Jarita Holbrook was featured in the
Astronomical Society of the Pacific’s “Astronomy Beat” in July. In the article,
Jarita describes her evolution from astrophysicist (Ph.D., University of
California, Santa Cruz, with a dissertation on single versus cluster star
formation) to anthropologist studying the role of astronomy in African culture
and bringing it to a wider audience.

Jarita has done field work in Africa; in fact she is
there this fall, teaching at South African universities and learning about the
astronomy-related beliefs of several African cultures. For the ASP she
described how she got into this work and the conference she co-organized in
Ghana in 2006 at the time of a solar eclipse. The proceedings became a book, African
Cultural Astronomy (New York:
Springer, 2008), which she co-edited with African col­leagues R. Thebe
Medupe (pictured above with Jarita) and Johnson O. Urama.

I am sure we will hear more about cultural astronomy
during the next two years as Jarita assumes the chair of HAD.

Call for Nominations for the 2012

LEROY E. DOGGETT PRIZE FOR HISTORICAL
ASTRONOMY

Thomas
Hockey, University of Northern Iowa

The Historical Astronomy
Division of the American Astronomical Society awards its highest honor, the
LeRoy E. Doggett Prize, biennially to an individual who has significantly
influenced the field of the history of astronomy by a career-long effort. Any
member or affiliate member of HAD may nominate a candidate for the Prize.
Nominations must include at least one detailed letter of support and a complete
curriculum vitae for the nominee. Supporting letters are welcome.

Deadline for nominations
for the next prize cycle will be 15 March 2011. Nominations roll over for two prize cycles.

Last year’s International Year of
Astronomy brought forth a prodigious amount of literature on the telescope and
its influence in science, society, and even art. Yet philosophers were oddly
absent in recognizing the 400th anniversary of this remarkable instrument. They
have not been so in regard to the telescope’s cousin, the microscope.

Both the telescope and the microscope
have extended human senses and are the basis for many scientific achievements;
some of those of the microscope can save our lives. Yet philosophers of an
idealist persuasion question the microscope as a conduit to reality. The
argument goes something like this: The telescope, at least, shows us objects
that we could, in theory, visit and scrutinize at close distance—planets
and stars. The microscope shows us objects in an inner world that we can never
call upon ourselves.

Regardless of what you believe about the
microscope, this old special pleading for the telescope I find naïve today.
Telescopes now allow us to view far beyond the stars. For example, we can use
them to observe distant quasars. Even if we could visit the site of a quasar,
it would no longer be a quasar. There might be some other visual creature, at
another time and far across the Universe, who could see the quasar without a
telescope, much as we do with it. Still, as long as we are fantasizing, we
might as well also envision a visual creature so small that it can observe a
cell and see it much as we see the cell by using a microscope. Nonetheless,
neither creature is us. No, I find the microscope and telescope equivalent in
that they both allow us to “visit” places to which we could never travel
through space and time.

The “free pass” philosophers have given
to the telescope may be historical. Shortly after its invention, Galileo
Galilei argued, strongly and publicly, with peers such as Martin Horky, that
the view provide by a telescope is that of reality. Johannes Kepler’s
verification through the use of witnesses, and later his optical theory (though
incomplete), soon seemed to “cinch the deal.” Terrestrial (and space) travel
continue to bear these men out. The telescope eventually was credited with
providing key evidence for the acceptance of the Copernican theory. The
microscope had no such eloquent champions.

Nevertheless, both instruments require us
to view an object through a medium. Certainly we do that routinely. With our
naked eye we see things through natural, transparent materials (such as water
and air) all the time. But the mirrors and lenses within a telescope or
microscope are artificially constructed based upon an optical theory. Of course
they work great. That does not stop the philosopher, though. He or she is
obligated to ask, “Should it always be so—and why?”

I do not argue for skepticism about the
utility of the telescope. Rather, I argue that those who are skeptical of the
microscope are obligated to give my cherished telescope equal time. If you
accept the telescope as a conduit to truth, must you not also accept the
microscope?

We will again have the HAD
information booth in the Exhibition Hall at the Seattle meeting of the AAS. The
booth will be “open” from 9:00 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. on Monday, Tuesday, and
Wednesday, 10-12 January 2011, and from 9:00 a.m. to noon on Thursday 13
January, except for the times when HAD has oral sessions and when we have our
business meeting. We are seeking volunteers to spend one-hour shifts at the
booth.

Please let me
know those dates and times that you will be able to join us at the HAD booth.
Use e-mail or after 1 January call me at 615-438-4290.

HAD is off to a good start in raising
funds to endow the Donald E. Osterbrock Book Prize. Many friends and admirers
of Don, both HAD members and nonmembers, have contributed a total of more than
$13,000 since fundraising began in the spring. It is hoped that more
contributions will come in as AAS members renew membership.

On June 10, 2009, the world lost a
pioneer in sun-climate research, Dr. Jack Eddy (one of the founders of HAD). We
will convene a symposium in Aspen, Colorado centered on Sun-climate
relationships to celebrate the life, work, and cross-disciplinary approach of
this remarkable man. The symposium will take place October 22–24, 2010.

Specific goals of the meeting include:
(1) stimulating talented college students, from junior year to graduate level,
to enter the climate and solar research areas, with attention also drawn to the
public communication, history and politics of science; (2) assessing
Sun-climate relationships some 34 years after Eddy’s seminal paper on the
“Maunder minimum,” at a period when the Sun’s behavior is somewhat unusual and
political interest is intense; and (3) highlighting Jack Eddy’s career as an
outstanding example of cross-disciplinary research.

Every two years, a cadre of historians of
astronomy converges on the campus of Notre Dame to attend an intimate meeting
in a congenial atmosphere. The Tenth Biennial History of Astronomy Workshop
will be held on July 6–10, 2011. A full slate of presentations and
activities will keep us occupied throughout the meeting, including what has now
become a regular feature of the meeting: a day trip to the Adler Planetarium in
Chicago. I would like to cordially invite HAD members to participate in the
upcoming conference.

At the 2009 meeting, a fascinating
session on the philosophy of astronomy kicked off the meeting. The session was
organized and chaired by Steve Dick, and included presentations by George Gale,
Don Howard, Owen Gingerich, Michael Crowe, and Matt Stanley. The session
demonstrated the enormous potential for this new field of study, and attendees
of the business meeting that closed the workshop expressed an overwhelmingly
positive reaction to extending our investigations. Thus the organizing
committee of Marv Bolt, Steve Dick, David DeVorkin, and Matt Dowd has pursued
this topic as a theme for the 2011 meeting.

The philosophy of astronomy raises a host
of intriguing questions: What is astronomy? What kind of a science is it, and
what kind of a science has it been? Is it purely observational or does it seek
explanations? What is and what has been the societal role of the astronomer?
How are new astronomical objects described and classified? Does astronomy, now
and in the past, present peculiar problems of observation-theory interac­tion?
What issues surrounding instruments, which have been so important to the
progress of astronomy, can benefit from historical-philoso­phical inquiry?
A number of organized sessions are already in the works to answer these and
similar questions. Liba Taub, Director and Curator of the Whipple Museum of the
History of Science and Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the
University of Cambridge, will be the invited international speaker and will
bring a wealth of knowledge and scholarship to the questions at hand.

The biennial meetings have long been
driven by the participants, who bring their research and scholarship before the
group, and who provide insightful critique and aid to their colleagues. Because
of the small meeting size and the deliberate attempt to provide time for
discussion, those who attend these meetings are able to address a friendly
audience and receive useful feedback. We thus invite paper and session
proposals from all time periods, geographical regions, and methodological
approaches that will expand our investigation into the theme of the philosophy
of astronomy. We are also open to nontraditional sessions, such as hands-on
activities that could be used in classrooms or in public outreach.

Submission guidelines will be available
through the conference website at http://www.nd.edu/~histast//; that site will be updated as more information becomes available.
Updates are also sent to the HASTRO-L list online. Submissions, as well as
other inquiries and more detailed questions, can be sent to me.

As announced last year, HAD now offers an
award of $500 to one graduate student to attend and present a paper at each HAD
meeting. The first recipient will be Clifford J. Cunningham, a student pursuing
a Ph.D. in history of astronomy at James Cook University in Townsville, Australia. He
will speak in the special session on the Herschel family contributions,
presenting “Who Invented the Word “Asteroid”: William Herschel or Stephen Weston?”
His thesis advisors, Brian G. Marsden and Wayne Orchiston, are listed as
coauthors.

Alan Fiala (1942-2010)

Brenda Corbin,
USNO Library

HAD member Alan D. Fiala died on May 26,
2010, in Arlington, Virginia. He suffered respiratory failure after a brief
illness. Alan, who was 67, had been a staff astronomer at the U.S. Naval
Observatory in Washington, D.C., for his entire professional career. As one of
the world’s experts on eclipse calculations, he was the lead author of the
chapter on eclipse calculations in the 1992 Explanatory Supplement to the
Astronomical Almanac, and was also the
co-author of Canon of Lunar Eclipses 1500 B.C–A.D. 3000 with Bao-Lin Liu, the foremost Chinese expert. The
photo shows him at a 1981 eclipse in southern Tasmania. The full obituary for
the AAS has been prepared by George H. Kaplan of the Naval Observatory and will
be available online in 2011.

Ruth S. Freitag, a HAD member for many
years, has recently suffered health problems and is now residing in a nursing
facility in Falls Church, Virginia. Although her condition is improved, she is
confined to a wheelchair. As many of you recall, from 1988–2001, Ruth
compiled the very valuable lists, “Recent Publications Relating to the History
of Astronomy,” which appeared as supplements to HAD News. These lists are still available online at http://had.aas.org/bibliographies/. For many years Ruth regularly attended the HAD
sessions at the AAS meetings, and was also a regular attendee of the Biennial
History of Astronomy Workshops at the University of Notre Dame.

If any of Ruth’s colleagues would like to
send her a note bringing her up to date on recent history of astronomy
activities, she would certainly enjoy hearing from you. Her address is

Ruth S.
Freitag

Powhatan
Nursing Home

2100
Powhatan Street

Falls Church, VA 22043-1940.

A recap of Ruth’s long career might be of
interest to HAD members. She graduated from Penn State in 1944 and enlisted in
the Women’s Army Corps in June 1945, serving 3 years in China. After military
service, she applied for a clerical position in the Foreign Service and was eventually
called to Washington for training. She served as a communications specialist at
the embassy in London and later Hong Kong. A few years after leaving the
Foreign Service, she enrolled in a Master’s of Library Science Program at the
University of Southern California. After receiving her degree, she came to the
Library of Congress in 1959 as one of the six recruits in the intern class of
librarians. She later took a position in the Bibliography and Reference
Correspon­dence Section, where she worked for 19 years. Ruth soon became
one of the Library’s foremost experts in reference work, especially with her
encyclopedic knowledge of resources in science and technology. She also held
positions in the Office of Bibliography and the Science and Technology Division.
She retired in February 2006 after 55 years of federal service.

In an interview in 1990, Ruth noted that
“bibliographic work may sound dull at first, but it can really grow on you, to
the extent of becoming a vice.” She also mentioned “it’s true what they say
about librarians ... whatever you have learned someday you will use, so it pays
to be a snapper-upper of unconsidered trifles.”

In 1984, the Library of Congress
published Ruth’s masterful 3,235-entry Halley’s Comet: A Bibliography. Ruth was a stickler for accuracy in citations and it
is likely there are very few errors in this massive bibliography.

At the January 2006 HAD meeting in
Washington, DC, Chair Don Yeomans presented Ruth with a special plaque from the
Division thanking her for her years of preparing the “Recent Publications
Relating to the History of Astron­omy” bibliographies.

One of the innovations introduced by the
current HAD Committee was to allocate funds to those who organize special
sessions at meetings. This has made it possible for organizers to bring in a
greater variety of speakers than in the past. The 2011 special sessions in
Seattle will include speakers from institutions in the United Kingdom and
Australia as well as the United States and Canada, while last year’s special
session in Washington featured a keynote speaker from New Zealand.

The special sessions have also become more likely to be considered worthy of publication. The papers presented in last year’s special session on “the First Century of Astronomical Spectroscopy,” organized by Joseph S. Tenn, were expanded and published in the July 2010 issue of the Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage.The
journal contains contributions from John Hearnshaw; Matthew Stanley; Barbara J. Becker; Jay M. Pasachoff and Terry-Ann Suer; Richard A. Jarrell; David H. DeVorkin; and Vera C. Rubin.

Two years ago in Long Beach, Eugene F. Milone organized a session on “Astronomical Photometry: Past, Present, and Future,” and an expanded version is about to come out as a book published by Springer and edited by Milone and Christiaan Sterken. The book contains
chapters by Sterken, Milone, and Andrew T. Young; Milone and J.W. Pel; Steve B. Howell; Carol W. Armbruster, Anthony B. Hull, Robert H. Koch, and Richard J. Mitchell; Arlo U. Landolt; Milone and Young; R.F. Wing; Martin Cohen; Saul J. Adelman; and Pierre Bastien.

The following is reprinted (by permission
of Springer) from the preface by the two co-editors:

No astrophysical theory can be tested
without data, and those that deal with predictions of visible objects in the
universe often require observational data. The precise and accurate measurement
of electromagnetic data is called photometry. In this volume we discuss from
both physical and historical perspectives, the elements and practice of
astronomical photometry applied to the electromagnetic spectrum from the near
ultraviolet to the middle infrared, roughly between 200 to 20 000 nm or 0.2 to
20 µm.

The history of astronomical precision
begins with the ancient Greeks, among whom Hipparcos (∼190 to ∼120
B.C.) provided the rst quantitative measurements of stellar “magnitudes” in a
catalogue. Photometric precision progressed very slowly until the development
of the telescope and the rst measures of comparative brightness of the Sun and
Moon. Only with the end of the 19th century did the precision of astronomical
visual photometry reach the 2% level, although not frequently. The application
of photography provided a greater degree of objectivity to detections, but
brightness measurements from photographic plates were still relatively
subjective until the development of measuring engines at the beginning of the
20th century. Even so, the lack of uniformity of the plates’ glass and
emulsions, coupled with atmospheric effects, conspired to prevent breakthroughs
to greater precision. The rise of photoelectric photometry did achieve greater
precision, but again, only in the teeth of intrinsic difculties. CCD
photometry, starting in the 1980s gradually became dominant as CCDs became the
detectors of choice at most observatories, but there, too, many problems that
plagued the photographic plate era returned, with the additional difculty of
the need to calibrate the spectral or passband sensitivities of what have
become ensembles of millions of individual detectors.

The highest precision with which an
astronomical brightness measurement can be made is 0.0001 magnitude currently,
about 0.01% of the value of the measurement. In practice, such precision is
difcult to achieve.

The historical developments are
outlined and the methods of achieving the highest possible precision in each
era are discussed, along with their limitations. A balance is kept between
discussions of hardware and software, between techniques and achievements, and
between the science of detection and measurement and the astrophysics for which
the photometry is carried out.

In the course of this exposition, we
discuss both “absolute” as well as “relative” photometry, the techniques for
doing precise photometry under less than pristine skies, and the techniques to
provide the best possible results in cases where the skies are indeed
“photometric.” References are made to calibrations for both ground- and
space-based surveys, although we do not discuss in this volume the important
topic of astronomical surveys per se, which deserves its own extensive
treatment. There are treatments also of the ever important techniques of spectrophotometry
and polarimetry, and, in all the elds of astronomical photometry, the promise
of further improvements is explored.

This volume on the past, present, and
future of photometry combines the views of past and present and perhaps future
members and ofcers of the International Astronomical Union’s Commission 25 on
Photometry and Polarimetry. The opportunity to combine these views came about
through sessions convened at a Historical Astronomy Division meeting held
simultaneously with its parent organization, the American Astronomical Society,
in Long Beach, California in January, 2009. Almost all of the authors who
contribute here presented their views at that meeting, but the present papers
are far more than a recapitulation of those necessarily brief presentations.
The present writings are expansive and have been made as extensive as their
authors required to present full exposition.

Quiz Answers

1. There
were 694 papers by 854 authors. The number of different authors presenting was 404.

4.
Thirty-three papers were presented at the Chicago meeting in May 1999. This
meeting celebrated the centennial of the AAS and included eight papers
presented at the Adler Planetarium on exhibiting the history of astronomy. It
also featured a session in which five senior astronomers recalled their most
memorable AAS meetings. The runner-up was the June 1984 meeting in Washington
and Baltimore, with 32, of which 14 were presented in a marathon session at the
National Air and Space Museum.